22 January 2009

Balls of glory

After a month-long hiatus over the holidays, hubby and I will be returning to another season of court volleyball tonight. Once again we will be joining the illustrious ranks of the Billy Whitmore Experience and playing in the recreational division with the Ottawa Sport and Social Club (OSSC). We could probably start playing at the intermediate level but the Thursday games work well for the team and we still have loads of improvement to make…which leads me nicely into my segue.

In order to improve our game, hubs and I joined a Volleyfit class through our local community centre. As the name implies, it’s pretty much a mix of fitness and cardio exercises with volleyball skills and drills thrown in for good measure. While I’ll readily admit that our first class sucked, last night’s session was wonderful because we had a replacement instructor that was better able to assess the skills and needs of the class. I was somewhat disheartened after the first class because the instructor was (a) late showing up, (b) not willing to demonstrate movements or exercises (c) not attentive to peoples’ confusion re: serve and receive rotations and (d) the list could go on! Last night was very much back to basics, which is exactly what the doctor ordered. We practiced returning serves and aiming to the setter, a valuable lesson that helped everyone play better in the end. I loved every second and I have the bumps, scars and slide marks to prove it today…seriously, who knew that a hardwood floor could burn so much? I wish this replacement instructor could become our regular coach, but sadly we’re back to the original guy next week. He did, however, promise to talk to our instructor to let him know what worked well with the class; hopefully our future sessions will follow a similar pattern of instruction.

Now that I feel loose and limber (albeit a little sore and scarred), I’m looking forward to returning to my regular season games tonight. For Christmas I purchased myself a new volleyball shirt that I am excited to reveal to the team tonight; I’m hoping that they will take in onboard as the team T-shirt - an idea that we’ve been throwing around lately. I’ll post a picture tomorrow, for fear that a teammate may be reading today’s post. Cross your fingers folks! Here’s hoping that Billy goes all the way this season.